


A Promise

by galamiel



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:36:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galamiel/pseuds/galamiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He promised to build her a home on Rannoch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Promise

He builds her a home on Rannoch. He’s never been particularly good at building things; Tali had teased him about how his line of work was tailored towards destruction, and it was true. He could take down an enemy with one clean shot from his sniper rifle, could hurl grenades with surprising accuracy, was proficient with every weapon the Alliance had ever slapped in his hands. Hey, he'd even destroyed a race of deadly synthetics hell bent on taking out all organics. But he couldn’t build a house.

He enlists help from other quarians around the settlement - they’re more than willing to help him out, even if they’re not quite so sure how to build houses either - and Tali pretends she doesn’t know. She pretends to be in the dark when they leave the drydocked liveship they’ve been living in and go to their finished house, pretends to be surprised by the strong, sturdy walls, as if she had not just seen them a few days earlier when she’d come by to help wire the home.

And while she’s completely unsurprised by the house, she is a little shocked by the tender way he wraps his arm about her shoulders and leans into her. She winds her arms around his waist, rests her head against his chest, and ignores the tears welling up in her eyes behind her helmet, because someday she’ll be able to cry without it and he’ll kiss away every tear that lingers on her cheek.

“I’ll build you a house on the homeworld,” he’d told her, a painful echo of her father in his earnest words. She’d come to think of the line as an omen, something the people she loved said before they left her life forever.

“Get back to Rannoch. Build yourself a home,” he’d said later, gloves against her mask, and she’d ached to feel them against her skin.

“I have a home,” she’d whispered to him. Humans always spoke of how home was where the heart was, and she hadn’t understood what they meant until she’d left him to return to the Migrant Fleet and felt lost without his arms around her.

He’d come back to her, in the end, just as he always did. And maybe this last time he was a little more scarred, a little more broken, but he had come back and she’d held limp hands in hers and wept into her helmet as the medics worried their hands behind her, unsure of how to tell her that he might not live. But he’d _promised_ her, and he was Shepard, so how could he not survive? And now he holds her in his arms as they gaze out the window, stare at the stream and cliffside that Tali claimed as her own almost a lifetime ago.

“I love you,” he says abruptly. She turns her masked face to look up at him, and he touches it with one callused hand. “I’ve never told you, but I do. I love you, Tali’Zorah vas Rannoch.”

“ _Keelah_ , Shepard,” she says, her smile hidden behind her helmet. “You are such a _nerd_.”


End file.
